Part of me thinks we're just in a very long, drawn-out adoption process for all of this.
Things seem to have gotten much better since the first USB-C only Macbooks and other devices started to arrive, so my hope is that we'll reach a point within another few years where one can pretty confidently purchase a cable or charger and assume it'll work with a standard device. It certainly does suck for now that you can end up with the wrong thing if you don't do a ton of compatibility checking.
Things seem to have gotten much better since the first USB-C only Macbooks and other devices started to arrive, so my hope is that we'll reach a point within another few years where one can pretty confidently purchase a cable or charger and assume it'll work with a standard device. It certainly does suck for now that you can end up with the wrong thing if you don't do a ton of compatibility checking.